Tom took the hellum, I stood by to let go the anchor,
and Jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and
watch out for danger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not very
fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that Jim looked dim
and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and we talked low
and was anxious. Now and then Jim would say:
"Highst her a p'int, Mars Tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a foot
or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with
people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and
stretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could
gap and stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him
off. By and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we
a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a
little, very sudden, and Jim sung out in an awful scare:
"Oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, Mars Tom, here's de biggest giant
outen de 'Rabian Nights a-comin' for us!" and he went over backwards in
the boat.
Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man's
face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a
house looks out of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must 'a' been
clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then I come to, and
Tom had hitched a boat-hook on to the lower lip of the giant and was
holding the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got
a good long look up at that awful face.
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